Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday February 06, 2009 @03:52AM
from the create-your-own-drama dept.

tnt001 writes "In the world of EVE Online, the infamous Band of Brothers alliance has been disbanded. It seems that rival alliance Goonswarm had a spy in the holding corporation, and he stole money as well as capital ships and other assets. The spy then disbanded the alliance. 'One of GoonSwarm's stated motivations from their early days as an alliance was to punish what they viewed as the arrogance of Band of Brothers. If they've held true to that ideal, stealing the alliance out from under BoB effectively means GoonSwarm has accomplished what they set out to do years ago.' As of 11:00 GMT, BoB lost all its sovereignty (its outposts are conquerable now, cyno-jammers are offline, jump bridges are inoperable)."

Those 2000+ people signed up for a game where alliances battle rivals through various methods. This didn't impact their hobby, this IS their hobby. What they signed up to is a game where this sort of thing not only can happen, but happens pretty often. If this is the first time something like this happened with an alliance this large, great, they got the high score in their game.

The only thing interesting about this whole situation is the "news" coverage it is getting.

It might seem like some sort of big deal because so many people are involved, but this sort of thing is a core element for the higher level play of the game. Maybe if the game didn't focus on this aspect of the gameplay as one of its main selling points to get new players, this would be interesting. This is just a "water is wet" story.

The real headline could be about how one alliance managed to use sites like Slashdot to wave the flag that their rival's outposts are now conquerable. Going so far as to get pseudo news sites with large followings to function as a communications tool and a rallying cry for a virtual world battle is actually pretty interesting.

For sure, it "is" the game -- and listening the (former) BOB guy on the radio feed (RTFA), he seems to take it in stride. But it's sorta cool to see a big piece of game-changing news (from the only MMO that really supports big, game changing news inside the context of the game), get such broad coverage. I don't even play the game, but I listened to the radio interviews because it's kind of an exciting story, and of course, I followed the allegations of BOB getting special access from the Eve developers, so

You know, I fully respect your right not to care about this news, because it has no affect on you. Sort of like how I don't really care about who is the mayor of Palm Springs or whether Grandville High School won the big football game last night, but like it or not, EVE Online has an active playerbase all around the world, and they're the types of people who read Slashdot. If you played EVE, which I understand you don't, you'd understand that this news is epic. In the scope of the game, it's akin to the fall of the Soviet Union. (Two polarized superpowers, and one of them falls.)

To put in perspective how seriously the people involved (not me) take this stuff, the leaders of the disbanded alliance got on flights at 3am to meet in Washington DC (I believe) so they could pick up the pieces and start getting to work on putting together the alliance. Honestly, I'm surprised it took almost 36 hours for an article to get on Slashdot.

To put in perspective how seriously the people involved (not me) take this stuff, the leaders of the disbanded alliance got on flights at 3am to meet in Washington DC (I believe) so they could pick up the pieces and start getting to work on putting together the alliance.

Why? Have they never heard of webcams and videoconferencing? Or just plain telephones?

According to this [worldofwarcraft.com] website (far from scientific) the largest guild in WoW is maybe 3600 members. BoB was twice that. I don't believe one of those guilds has ever been compromised in one day through a single act of metagaming. WoW servers are splintered. EVE has a single server, (instance) and everyone who plays EVE plays in a single universe. EVE may have a fraction of the players as WoW, but EVERYONE in EVE knows BoB.

I would bet this is the largest fall of an online superpower to date. I think that's newsworthy.

1) It killed a fully geared toon in 10 seconds.
2) It had 2 billion hit points
3) If you did some kind of quest, it woke up, kicked every one's ass in the world and then left the game forever unbeaten.

b) It was beaten on a PVP server-- every server in the game was getting updates as it progressed.
1) They had to have security to fend off any griefers who would try to stop it.
2) They had to prevent anyone from completing the quest
3) They had a lineup of 30 warriors whose job was to step up, get aggro, die.
4) They had a support group big enough to raise those warriors, rebuff them, and get them back in rotation within 300 seconds.
5) It took some ungodly number of *hours* to do this. Every server was getting updates. "7:37pm, Sleeper at 93%" "10:05pm, Sleeper at 52%"
6) A bug or direct intervention by the Developers prevented them from winning the first attempt-- so they had to do it all, then remotivate everyone and do it again after the Devs got jumped on by all of EQ to give them a fair shot.

Still that was only about 600 people (with an audience of a few hundred thousand perhaps). The Eve thing sounds bigger.

In Eve, the stupid missions aren't the game. It's the 90%+ of space that's not controlled by any guards whatsoever. A single guild isn't big enough to control much, so alliances form to hold and control a few stars in an area.

Imagine if WoW or whatever the hell you play (and I used to for 8 months -- had a maxxed out Ranger Cowgirl with Ravager pet who could down anyone except for one other ranger in complete tier whatever purple) except that the PvP areas you laid down your own castles to try to literally own and control the whole zone. You installed automated ballistas and catapults and whatnot. You tried to guard the zone in and one out points.

Yeah. So go back to doing the lame quests and "raids" and other pointless garbage.

Oh, and the bigger ships are persistent and cannot be stored and do not disappear when you log out, and neither do these player space stations ("POS" in Eve lingo, player-owned structures.) So you'd better have some good defense, a big alliance with someone always around to sound the alarm, or be damned good at security-through-obscurity.

For you. I can't think of anything I want less in my online gaming. Of course, that's the problem with some PvP fans... they can't understand that the preference of every MMO player in existence doesn't line up with theirs, and then deride those who prefer other methods by talking about "lame quests and raids and other pointless garbage". God forbid we learn to appreciate the fact that other people like different things.

Wow, this is quite the news. Still though it's all metagame stuff. They will be disbanded for how ever long it takes to reform the alliance. Disbanded game mechanics wise doesn't mean they are out of touch and shooting at each other. They lose sovereignty and some other stuff but in the end they will likely get it back unless goonswarm and friends had a major offensive planned for this occasion.

It's a bit more than that. With sovereignty, you lose a large chunk of your internal economy and logistics. A lot of that will not have to be re-acquired, it will have to be rebuilt, from the ground up.

The reason BoB was able to hold on its central Delve systems was that sovereign systems are easy to defend. You have cynos, you have jumpbridges, you have reserves of capitals and super-capitals ready to reinforce. And it helped that Delve was a very rich sector, making it a perfect logistics base.

Those advantages are gone. They have to be rebuilt - and most ennemy corps will not stand idle while BoB regroup. Look at the influence map: BoB has started to reassert sovereignty in pieces, but there's already huge chunks of territory carved. Getting them back... is going to take months. Or a year. Or two.

The whole region is already seeing everyone and their mothers moving in to loot and pillage. More than just a strategic loss, they now have to deal with a large number of enemies and random neutrals coming to play in their space.

Also, the Band of Brothers name was claimed by the Goons, so they can't reform under it.

I don't play the game, but is what they did realistic within that universe?

I suppose a spy/saboteur/traitor is certainly possible, but in [alternate] reality could he have got away with what he did without putting himself physically at risk? Would not ships' crews, garrissons etc have some autonomous decision making such that thay might disobey strange orders?

You know I have to admit, finding out that there is an MMO out there that supports this level of cooperation, strategy, and espionage is almost shocking. If I was heavily into games like I was a few years back I would definitely be checking this game out.

People are bitching up a storm about this, because it is basically an exploit of game mechanics. It takes you 24 hours to leave a corporation that you're in, it takes 24 hours for a vote and then 24 hours of notification before you can go to war, but you can apparently disband an entire alliance in an instant.

At the same time, one of the many sub-games in Eve is spying. A lot of people call it meta-gaming, in that a lot of it takes place outside the Eve client. It's a fact of life when playing the game, and

I'll translate it into a semi-realworld (fictional) scenario to help out...

"In the world of Business-Politics, the infamous Apple company has been dissolved. It seems that rival Company Microsoft had a [director level] spy in the holding corporation, and he stole money as well as Super-Computers and other assets. The spy then dissolved the company. 'One of Microsoft's stated motivations from their early days as a company was to punish what they viewed as the arrogance of Apple. If they've held true to that ideal, stealing the marketplace out from under Apple effectively means Microsoft has accomplished what they set out to do years ago.' As of 11:00 GMT, Apple lost all its Intellectual Property. (its patents are void now, trademarks are pointless, copyrights are invalid)."

Now if you can imagine the majority of Apple employees were living in their work cubicals when they found out. The next morning all apple employees were then promptly all shoved out into the street with little more than the clothes on their back. Linux and Microsoft gangs bum rushed into the area to quickly rob every apple employee as possible and quickly convert former-apple assets into new workstations and easy cash.

It's probably the biggest zerozero political upheaval in EVE's history.

I know what you mean. Here I am stationed in Iraq, I've got people going out every day who are possibly going to get really killed. We find explosives, get shot at, you name it. It's all VERY real. But there are enough people who are so totally insulated from this sort of thing that the EVE Online game is vastly more important to them.

On the other hand, this should spur someone from Darfur to post about the genocide there. Or one of the congo nations where life is so horrible.

What does it say about us as a species that there is such a range of lifestyles? On one end is the people where EVE Online takeovers might be the most important thing to happen to them all year. At the other end are refugees who get killed by the thousands and would have been starving and diseased anyway.

Is this disparity good or bad? Is there any limit to how much disparity is good? Would we be better off if everybody had similar worries and we were all about the same level on Maslow's hierarchy of needs?

It IS a game and it's enjoyable to participate in. There is probably a happy medium for how serious people should take games. On my last deployment I didn't have access to internet (or phones, or tv) so we played frisbee or came up with stupid pranks.

I think a lot of vets feel the way you do. They get back and go wtf is wrong with you people, arguing over childish things? Probably why so many vets become unsync'd with the society they grew up in. But it's probably better this way. Try to keep the innocent.. innocent. No need for my family to REALLY know how shitty the world truely is, eh?

It might sound stupid to say that about a video game, but really, it is about choosing one's meaning of life. I know some immigrants here who work in shitty job but who will enjoy their retirement in their home village as wealthy people. Apocalypse Now was about a man who chose to become a god among primitives instead of a soldier among soldiers. Some people prefer to be mercenary bosses, pirates kings or wide corporations CEO in a virtual world instead of a pawn in real life. I can't really blame them.

Some people prefer to be mercenary bosses, pirates kings or wide corporations CEO in a virtual world instead of a pawn in real life.

My main problem with your argument is the phrase choice, "instead of". OK, great, they are all powerful in a virtual world, but this may be "while being" a pawn in real life. Or, this may be "while being" a powerful person in real life. As great as games are for escaping the mundane, you cannot escape real life forever. This is not a binary "instead of" situation.

I play games, but I don't let them interfere with my real life. I choose to make my life better. Do I disagree with your premise that people

A very valid question, and given your situation, one that you can hardly be blamed for asking.

To answer your question, no, of course the disparities that exist across the globe are wrong and unjustifiable. Of course, from experience we know that we can't remove disparity altogether; apart from anything else, not all humans are equally hardworking, intelligent, or physically capable and from that point of view it seems unreasonable that someone that works twice as hard should receive the same as someone s

I know what you mean. Here I am stationed in Iraq, I've got people going out every day who are possibly going to get really killed. We find explosives, get shot at, you name it. It's all VERY real. But there are enough people who are so totally insulated from this sort of thing that the EVE Online game is vastly more important to them.

On the other hand, this should spur someone from Darfur to post about the genocide there. Or one of the congo nations where life is so horrible.

I slogged through two tours in Afghanistan. It was five years ago, and I still don't really like to see news much. After 8 years of Army service deployed four times to such wonderful places (e.g. Bosnia), I feel like I've used up my capacity for dealing with brutal realities. I think it's good that some people have their silly little games to occupy them. Most people can't handle the shit you and I have had to see.

First, thank you for your sacrifice and service to our country. Second, you can't apply this logic so broadly. Compared to real danger, real death and real destruction, NOTHING is important. Games, movies, politics, the economy. It's all just window dressing compared to disarming live ordinance.

Maybe I'm taking you wrong but I'd like to think that the vast majority of EVE players, myself included, would never see real harm come to someone else over our game. BUT... It's still a game. Your post would be just as relevent about 99.98% of all articles on Slashdot, why wait to choose EVE to be the punching bag of what you feel is misguided interest? Why not instead shout down all the fans who paid thousands of dollars to see the latest Superbowl? Or perhaps the millions who paid more attention to what Michelle Obama was wearing during Inaguration Day instead of what the platform of the new administration was?

What do you think the average EVE player should be doing about the global situation?

Ultimatly, I'm sure everyone reading this and posting here is well aware that there are bad things going on all over the world. But we are who we are. Everyone produces in their own way and everyone takes something from the system on what some unfortunate souls in the Congo would consider a selfish way. By some people's standards even you are living a better life than they are.

So what exactly do you want from us? Do you want every thought on our mind to be about how horrible the world can be? Do you want every article on Slashdot to be about what you feel is most important in the world? I honor your work and sacrifice but I think it's out of line when you say stuff like "But there are enough people who are so totally insulated from this sort of thing that the EVE Online game is vastly more important to them."

Im sorry, but arent you out there fighting for those people? so they dont have to worry about more than their online personas.

He said Iraq. I'm not sure exactly what the purpose of that was - something about weapons of mass destruction that we knew where they were and that could be launched against British bases in Cyprus within 45 minutes, wasn't it? - but I'm pretty sure that whatever Saddam Hussein's evil plans were, messing with EVE Online wasn't high on his list of priorities. The troops in Iraq coul

I'm right with you. A friend lost her son in Iraq. I may not know what it's like there but I've seen the effects here.
The world is messed up and most people care more about themselves than others. Rampant materialism has led to the belief that we 'choose our own meaning' when that really leads to no meaning whatsoever.

As much as people wish there was some "higher nobility to humanity capable of dealing with the troubles of the world if we only set our minds to it, etc."--- the sad reality is that there just isn't. When I came back from Afghanistan, people were interested in what I saw, but only in the most general way. Very few wanted to hear about the horrible things I saw, like interpreters I worked with having their families attacked, or being killed themselves for cooperating with us. Those that claimed to be interes

First off, let me state that I'm a pacifist, and have absolutely no love for the violence and war-porn that infests our society. I've never served in the armed forces, and never intend to. I've met vets whom I've made great friendships with, and I've met vets whom I wish I'd never had the displeasure of meeting - they're human beings, good and bad, just like the rest of us. But I cannot let you attack the soldiers like this so unfairly without offering a different perspective.

To explain what it means... Cyno fields are special (and expensive) devices that create a wormhole in any place of the EVE universe. This is usually used to allow an attack force to bypass a heavily guarded point. If you want to create a decently secure place, you have to buy cyno-jammers in order to prevent this sapper work to be possible. BoB claimed a large part of territory and had several cyno-jammers in their presumably strategical positions. Cyno jammers offline means that a single ship avoiding detection could possibly open an access to an arbitrary large army anywhere inside their territory.

More importantly, cyno fields are the only way to move capital ships, since they don't fit through jump gates. If your cyno jammers are down, your enemies can jump in their Dreadnoughts, Carriers and Titans to put a hurting on your player-owned stations and other assets. They can also jump ships in to say, disrupt a large, but not so well defended mining operation that you used to run in very safe space. If the Goons planned this properly, this could devastate the economy of the former BoB corps.

In other words, if you have enemies with a large number of capital and other jump capable ships, losing your jammers means that you are very close to having your family jewels squeezed very hard. If I was the executor or one of the directors who spend the time to manage such a huge alliance, I would be feeling distinctly unwell right now.

GoonSwarm basically had this PR coup handed to them on a silver platter, they had done nothing themselves to make this happen.

What is known to have happened is that a player with full director access to the BoB holding corporation, Tinfoil, defected and asked GoonSwarm if they wanted full director access. They obviously replied in the positive, and eventually realized they now had access to the proverbial nuke button on their sworn enemies.

Speculation is rampant in the EvE community, though hard facts are hard to come by. Suggestions include that either this is a case of a hacked account, as the owner was supposedly on some form of military duty when this happened a few days ago. Another, less vocal, minority considers this to be a possible case of someone 'cracking' psychologically, possibly due to the player's military background.

Also, some people feel this event may be due to broken game mechanics, as it seem odd you can just nuke a large alliance into bedrock with a few mouse clicks and 2 minutes of work. Usually it takes either a director vote, or at least a 24 hour grace period, to perform drastic changes to corp policies and organization.

Summary: Not a spy, not GoonSwarm's work. Just a single unhappy defector undoing 4 years of work by some 3000 players in a few seconds.

Disclaimer: I play EvE Online, but am not a member of any of the major alliances in the game.

As someone who plays more traditional and structured MMO's, I find the idea that so much work can be reduced to ruins by one putz to be horrifying, especially given that games are supposed to be a way to escape the real-world.

I investigated further, like someone who just saw a massive train wreck, by reading the forums.

Goons seemed to have been given admin access to and archived the BoB forums as well, and have been posting juicier tidbits.

Having administered a "guild gone stale" in WoW, I can recognize the tone and content of the post. My conclusion is band of brothers had outgrown its purpose and was now as adrift and stale as GM.

The euthenasia of this massive organization will breathe new life into the game, but it may also drive a large number of these people who were screwed out of the game, making a huge dent in the userbase.

The euthenasia of this massive organization will breathe new life into the game, but it may also drive a large number of these people who were screwed out of the game, making a huge dent in the userbase.

You get a gold star!;) Seriously... you 'get' it. Yes... BoB controlled a very large, very rich, area of the game universe. This activity has made a huge 'hole' in space... the richest part of space. Before, all of claimable space had been claimed and had become fairly stable. This 'hole' has opened up a very rich region for land grabbing and the like... and with that, there will be squabbles, fights, and all sorts of new fun!

There will probably be a few who quit over this, true, but I doubt many will... life in EVE is like that... BoB has a bunch of very dedicated and extremely skilled players in it... I'm betting they will regroup and try to take back their space... which will stir up all kinds of drama in itself.

EVE lives for drama. The game *IS* made by the players. 99% of the game content is made by the players... who is fighting who? what regions are 'hot'? who just screwed over someone else? The leader of BoB said, and it was true, that BoB has been providing the game with content since they formed and first took space. Missions and all the PVE stuff is just the ISK printing press to fund the "real" part of the game by supplying money to players to buy stuff. The production (crafting) part of EVE is massive and an integral part of the game. If you're flying a ship, it was made by a player (and you're always flying a ship). If you fit tech2 equipment onto your ship, it was made by a player. And yeah, you have to have miners to get minerals, people to tend moon stations to harvest 'rare' minerals, and someone to take all those things and manufacture stuff.

It wasn't a spy, it was a defector. Goonsquad's recruitment comes 100% from within the Something Awful forums, with registration-date requirements and other security measures to weed out all but the most dedicated moles. They do however run recruitment scams from time to time: set up a sub-corporation, get people to give them time, in-game money and materials in return for recruiting them with the promise of full Goonswarm membership at a later date, and proceed to bilk them until they're no longer useful. Or at least, that's how it's supposed to go behind the scenes.

This guy joined up as a spy, and decided to stay around because the Swarm was actually nice to him. People were friendly and helpful, unlike BoB where he barely got a 'hello' upon recruitment. He got tired of BoB's 'Serious Business' attitude and under-appreciation, and put the screws to them.

This whole incident has nothing to do with Goonswarm infiltrating BoB with spies.

The person responsible was "just" a disgruntled BNC director that wanted to go out with a huge bang and GoonsFleet (The Mittani, to be precise) just gave him advice on how to maximize the damage he'd inflict on his way out.

This story is rather incomprehensible to the rest of us. Could an EVE player explain some terms like sovereignty, ISK reserves, cyno-jammers and capfleet towers, please? Good thing that territorial control [massively.com] was explained...

The article also says

Once assured a place within GoonSwarm, Agamar proceeded to disband the Band of Brothers alliance using his director level access.

This story is rather incomprehensible to the rest of us. Could an EVE player explain some terms like sovereignty, ISK reserves, cyno-jammers and capfleet towers, please? Good thing that territorial control was explained...

The article also says

Once assured a place within GoonSwarm, Agamar proceeded to disband the Band of Brothers alliance using his director level access.

...but what powers does the director level access give you, exactly?

Sovereignty is a game mechanic which allows several other things to work. It's built by holding a solar system or constellation for a certain period of time, up to a month. Losing it means all of the things which rely on it to stop working (see below).

ISK is the currency in EVE (read gold). ISK reserves, therefore, would be money set aside for later - in this case I believe it was set aside for upkeep fees.

A cyno-jammer prevents cynosural fields from forming in the system. A cynosural field allows capital ships to move between systems, as capital ships are too large to use the stargates normal, smaller ships use. It's an important defensive structure - one of the main purposes of capital ships are to attack Player Operated Stations (POSs), which are used (among other things) to claim sovereignty.

"Capfleet tower" is a little ambiguous, but given the context I believe they're referring to the assembly arrays required to build capital ships. Due to their size, they can't be manufactured in the same places other ships are built - they require a special module, anchored at a POS (the hub of which is called a tower). The capital ship assembly array also requires sovereignty to work. Losing sovereignty means that all the capital ships that were being constructed have been put on hold. If sovereignty can be rebuilt, then those manufacturing jobs would resume, but that will be difficult because the systems are so hotly contested right now - it's likely that the assembly arrays will be attacked and destroyed.

A corporation director has very nearly all the abilities of a CEO - basically a guild leader with full access. Normally that means that one can expel other corporation members, directly manipulate the wallet (where all the corporation's money is kept), and so on. In this case, because the defector had director access in the executor corp (sort of the leader corporation of the alliance), he also had access to all the alliance management options - including kicking member corporations out of the alliance, and then closing the alliance.

I don't play EVE. But without commenting on its politics, it seems to me as an outsider that this sort of coup shouldn't be possible in any game designed to have interesting and engaging politics.

The game mechanics (sovereignty allowing construction of major infrastructure) is a proxy for a large government/business bureaucracy who maintains and runs the infrastructure. These guys are abstracted out of the game because they're boring.

In any real human political/business organization, if a leader turned tr

On the contrary, the fact that coups like this *are* possible is exactly what attracts that level of meta-gamer who bothers to spend years of their life building a corp/alliance. If things like this weren't possible, large old alliances like BoB would be fixtures in the game, immovable and unconquerable.

As it was, BoB nearly was invincible due to the network of alliance level infrastructure they built up. The ongoing war between goonfleet and BoB had taken on the character of WWI: static lines that don't move much. That's boring. It's like you and your PvP opponent have both got your tier 8 gear and are no longer capable of killing each other, so you don't bother to fight anymore.

No infrastructure was destroyed; but by disbanding the alliance, they lost sovereignty; by losing sovereignty, they lost infrastructure features that require sovereignty. BoB's core territory in Delve is now conquerable. That doesn't mean conquered--see the post above from a BoB member who's excited about the impending action. What'll happen now is that BoB's core support will have to man the Delve systems continuously and defend them long enough for sovereignty to reassert (about three month). It'll be a long battle where they'll actually have to fight, rather than sit behind their cyno-jammers.

This isn't a glitch. This is exactly why those serious players play Eve, because stuff like this happens.

If you want a real-world analogy, don't think of gov't, think of Enron, where a few key executives were able to build a house of cards that almost overnight put 55,000 people out of work when it all collapsed. It's large-scale, player-driven reversals like this that make Eve interesting for those people.

Not to me, though:) After running some lvl 4 missions in my new Raven, I got bored, and didn't want to get into the politics of it.

I was merely responding to your point that there's no analogy in RL to a single key individual causing a ton of grief for a large institution. No, Enron wasn't good, but for proof that what happened to BoB was good in meta-game terms, read this subthread from a BoB member [slashdot.org]:

I am a member of Band of Brothers and the only thing this has caused is a renewed interest on the part of the Alliance.

If you believe him, this is a minor hiccup that's caused some need for a bit more active play on their parts while they

sovereignty - ownership of solar systemsISK - in-game currencycyno-jammers - stops enemy capital ships jumping in to the systemdirector - has full access to everything about the corporation/alliance. Only the owner is above.

Ok, so 0.0(zero zero) space is basically lawless solar systems that players can do whatever they want in. This is where the game of EVE gets intense. Sovereignty is recognized by whomever has the controlling number of Starbases in the system. Starbases are structures you can anchor in the Orbit of moons. They are the first steps to living in 0.0 space. This is where your corporation will build from and use as a safe place until you can build/conquer an Outpost. They constantly burn fuel so your corpor

yes - the regions of Delve, Querious, and about 2/3rds of Period Basis were controlled by Band of Brothers - in some systems Sov was gained by an ally of theirs who also had atleast 1 starbase in the system when BoB's ability to claim sov was destroyed by being disbanded.

All of member corporations of the former alliance BoB are still there and their assets are - they're just no longer effectively invincible. BoB had created such and effective network of defense using super-capitals, cyno jammers, and jump

Everyone is acting like this spy has done a horrible thing. I say what they did was neither good nor bad.

It was just playing the game!

BoB had apparently stalled. They had become complacent and just had way too much stuff. So now they are forced to play the game again to try to regain their ground.

It's amazing how much this is like real life, with each side hating the other and thinking the other is wrong to the point that they do things that -could- be considered 'evil'. At least, if it wasn't a game.

Disclaimer: I am not a member of Goonswarm, but I live in 0.0 and am in an alliance that is part of their coalition

BOB should have been disbanded by CCP back when they were caught red handed with CCP Devs in their leadership handing them stuff like candy (the infamous T20 scandal). As has been proven by information "liberated" from their message boards, BOB leadership was WELL aware of what was going on.

Also, BOB was the king of metagaming, account hacking, etc, and to see them fall as a result of it is d

I am a member of Band of Brothers and the only thing this has caused is a renewed interest on the part of the Alliance.

For them to remove us they will need to remove all of our moon mining and sovereignty towers. We have hundreds of capital ships and around 2k people waiting for the morons to come running into the chainsaw.

All of this is a pain, but sovereignty is already ticking to regain control. They have a little over two months to destroy us, before we get sovereignty three to re-acitvate our jammers, bridges and whatnot.

Considering we have war supplies and motivation, they will not be successful and their chest beating is simply propaganda.

In the last 24 hours almost all of BoB and their allies have fallen back to Delve to get ready for the fight. Before we mobilized they were tooting their horns about taking stations and anchoring pos's, but when push came to shove they didn't wish to engage.

Then I realized that the "real" news are filled with sports reports and celeb weddings, and I realized that this is basically the nerd equivalent thereof.

Some of the "real" news is pretty hilarious though:

"The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat," Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone.

"We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat," he said.

I think the/. i grew up with is dead. This is a huge political upheaval in a Virtual World. The old/. would lap up the meta-game consequences. The old/. would wax lyrical about the shifting social paradigms that would make this a headline. The old/. would figure out how to get the premium client running on a toaster.
The new/. is like a youtube comments page, nothing but vitriol and hate, smart-arse comments by half-wits.
I cite the Boron article yesterday, about 4 million "jokes" using variations on "Boring". I mean...COME ON! People had to then ask for clarification, in the old days people would have searched 1st, asked later. Not now, now its all hate and entitlement culture. Worst of all, no one even knows what the HURD is anymore.
Goodbye/.

Well this certainly made a change from the normal posts saying that/. is dumbing down to popular news even though its readers want "nfnstm".

I think you may have a point though, as there is more negative response to articles within geeky/scientific niches than in earlier days. It's a shame because personally I see/. as a source of alternative news to that found on Digg and the BBC etc, which is why a lot of semi-recent content which is very much mass market disappoints me. The fact that I can actually s

I think the/. i grew up with is dead. This is a huge political upheaval in a Virtual World. The old/. would lap up the meta-game consequences. The old/. would wax lyrical about the shifting social paradigms that would make this a headline.

Yes, but that was in 1998. Virtual worlds were new; anything more sophisticated than a MUD was pure Snow Crash stuff. Events like this were news because it was a virgin territory. Nobody knew what kind of culture would emerge, what kind of unwritten rules and social norms would become established in the new cyberspace communities.

Was Mr Bungle a rapist? Seems quite quaint now, doesn't it? It was a big deal at the time. Yet what he did was small beer compared to what anonymous trolls from ebaumsworld do every day. We know now what people will do in a virtual world given unlimited freedom to create as they see fit. They'll scrawl goatse on every available surface, and code up swarms of flying penises to molest furries. They'll swarm in a hundred Samuel L Jackson lookalikes and block off the exits from the swimming pool. It's just griefing, move on.

Events in-game like this one aren't interesting any more. Been there, done that, bored now. What gets/.'s interest nowadays is the interface between the game world and reality. The economics of gold farming, for instance. Or, player A buys a +5 Sword of Smiting with real money from player B. Player C kills player A in-game and takes the sword. Is player C a real-world thief? Having gained an item worth real-world money, is he liable for tax on it? That's where the unknown is now, where we don't really know the rules, so that's what's interesting.

As for the HURD - again, it's been too long, and we've mostly lost interest. We have a kernel of our own, thanks.

Probably the old/. is dead. However EVE is amazing game with social aspects unlike any other MMO on the market and has had fascinating scandals in the past. Unlike other MMO's where the big news is expansions driven by the DEVs, EVE's content aside from the world and game mechanics is driven by the players. What you are reading about is some of that drama/content.

Actually, I think it would be tamer. _All_ that a guild on WoW has is a few items in the guild banks. There is no equivalent of "sovereignty" or any holdings, etc.

I've actually been in 2 WoW guilds which split, exploded or imploded when half a dozen characters reached level 60 (it was the top back then), and greed kicked in. As in, "OMG, my preciouss epic stuff is all that matters, let's kick out everyone who doesn't/can't grind me my preciouss epic gear." People who had founded that guild got kicked out be

I've seen several large guilds "0wn3d" in this manner, and it's not pretty.

tens of thousands of gold and/or tens of thousands in enchanting mats, rare recipes, epic pieces all go up in smoke.

Guilds at that level of raiding are generally cellular in nature, with various cliques which get together to play. They don't recover when the roll is stripped, the gbank emptied, and the guild disbanded.

First off it's still a game, meaning entertainment, meaning it's supposed to be fun - and anyone who takes it that seriously is an incredibly sad individual.

Secondly, really, WoW isn't comparable. It's cute that you think WoW anecdotes are relevant, but they really aren't. The mechanics do not allow stuff on this scale(or even anything really directly comparable) because it is a player versus shell script game, not a sandbox game like EVE/old UO/etc.. The closest thing to an appropriate analogue I can th

I play games for fun, not to be screwed over by other players, and people wonder why EVE doesn't interest me enough

Wow, people wonder that?That's amazing.I can just picture them gathered around the water cooler, chatting.One of them says, "You know, I wonder why EVE doesn't interest Larry enough.".Another one replies, "Yes, I was discussing this with my inflatable girlfriend last night, and both of us were wondering why EVE doesn't interest Larry enough.".And then a third person says, "Maybe it's because he plays games for fun, not to be screwed over by other players."

Yes, I can imagine people wondering why EVE doesn't interest you enough.People who have even less of a life than people who take EVE seriously enough to submit lame articles about it to Slashdot.Or Slashdot editors who post them.Or people who anonymously comment about them.Or respond to anonymous comments about them.

It's not 'screwing you over' when I blow up your ACU in Supreme Commander. Nor is it griefing to try and trash your mass economy. The control perspective is unique - you're a 'unit' with a possibility to become a commander at various tactical levels, based on

EvE has a certain elitist air about it. Losing hurts, as you said. It takes days, if not weeks, to recover from a decisive defeat. Running EvE corporations isn't just running a clan, where you slap together a homepage and organize a raid or two per week. Planning in EvE means that you have your next few weeks pretty much laid down instead of considering that you may have time for some raid in a few days.

I just don't have the time anymore to play. "Playing" something like this is much more fun in real life.

The logistics of running a 00 corp/alliance have no comparison to other MMOs. As you said... simply slapping up a homepage and running a raid a night is trivial. Try keeping POSs fueled, minerals/materials moving around to where they need to go to build stuff, defense of your territory, any offensive maneuvers you happen to be involved in, etc... Alliances in EVE (the big ones) are many thousands of players, too... imagine a WoW guild of 3000+ people... heh... are there even that many people on a single W

EvE has a certain elitist air about it. Losing hurts, as you said. It takes days, if not weeks, to recover from a decisive defeat. Running EvE corporations isn't just running a clan, where you slap together a homepage and organize a raid or two per week. Planning in EvE means that you have your next few weeks pretty much laid down instead of considering that you may have time for some raid in a few days.

That's the biggest load of bull. Yes, you can play that way, but there's tons of players that just log in

What, $50? No, it's about 50B in raw mineral costs (not including BPOs, about a month of build time, the tower to build it at, the sovereignty to be able to plant the tower, the fuel to power the tower, etc, etc.)
Currently you can sell a 60d timecard ($35) for about 650m ISK. So, raw costs, if they already have all the infrastructure in place, is around $2,700.00.
Keep in mind, the (ISK) price of timecards has exploded since they got rid of the 30d cards. Even a few months ago it was more like $10,000.

BoB got betrayed by one of its most trusted members, it's not unlike a RL CFO running with some company funds.

Individual players lost nothing, but will have a hard time rebuilding under the pressure they'll be under. Everyone is very excited, the big war (about 2 years now) has been a stalemate with both sides deeply entrenched, now there's some hope of a conclusion at last.

And at the very least, lots of boat violence(*).

* EVE meme made famous after a Chinese ISK farmer whose spaceship got caught by players said "Please do not violence my boat"

Oh, dear, I hadn't realized that empires have been undone by a few mouse clicks. Indeed, in real life, all it takes is one lieutenant to get the keys to the briefcase with the button, and suddenly everyone follows his orders without question.